Podcasting - (Elham Naseri)
Podcasting, Video and screen casting, and live streaming Podcasting doesn't take an expensive computer to be able to store and play those files, as hard-drive disk space and RAM have become incredibly cheap compared to what they were just a few years ago. Those two advances have created another change in the way we consume multimedia. Whereas our computers used to play the media file as it streamed through the connection, now it simply downloads it and plays it once completely saved. It's made viewing these types of files more efficient and enjoyable, and it has pushed streaming of content further into the realm of live performance.But whatever the technology, the simple fact is that it has become much easier to create and consume multimedia as well as text and digital images. The almost ubiquitous presence of photo-video-audio upload-it-as-you-go cell phones, and free, as-much-space-as-you-want hosting online have begun to blur many of the cultural definitions of privacy and communication that we've lived under for generations. And the upshot is that all of it has created even more in terms of the potential uses of this new Read/Write Web that we are dealing with. PODCASTING One of the first podcasts I ever remember listening to was by Matthew Bischoff, a teenager who had a real passion for technology and a real understanding of audience. It was obvious from the first few seconds of his regular Internet radio show that he was a young man who was not speaking to just his friends or family. He was speaking to the unknown thousands of people who started downloading and listening to Matthew's shows in late 2004 when podcasting was born. "This is Escape From the World" he would half-shout into the microphone, "and I'm your host Matthew Bischoff, a 1 3-year-old from New Jersey, podcasting from his bedroom." It was great stuff (Bischoff, 2005). Matthew was one of the first of what has turned into tens of thousands of people who have taken the easy-publishing meme of the ReadlWrite Web into the world of Web radio. Podcasting is the creation and distribution of amateur radio, plain and simple. And it's the distribution piece of this that's important, because although we've been able to do digital audio for some time now, getting a lot of people to listen to it hasn't been very easy. Now it is. Many podcasts are presented by nonnal, everyday people just talking about things that interest them-with a bit of music mixed in. Others are more serious and focused in content, offering up the latest interesting news on a particular topic, interviews with interesting people, or recordings of interesting keynotes and presentations. And these days, most news programs, like Meet the Press and 60 Minutes, and many radio shows like Fresh Air from NPR are also offered up as podcasts so you can take them with you and listen to them whenever you like. In just a few short years, podcasting has become all the rage, and one of the reasons is that the barrier to entry is pretty low. Like the other technologies that I 've talked about in this book, you do not need a lot of technical expertise to make it work.Here's what you need to create a basic podcast: a digital audio recorder that can create an MP3 file, some space on a server to host the file, a blog, and something to say. That's it. That's part of why the number of new podcasts out there continues to explode. The other part of the quick success of podcasting comes from the fact that not only are they easy to create, they are easy to consume as well. And that's because of RSS. Just like it allows people to subscribe to your Weblog, RSS allows people to subscribe to your podcast. And just like new blog content shows up in your aggregator whenever it's posted, new podcasts show up in your MP3 player whenever they are created. Say, for instance, you are subscribed to Ben Grey's "The Ed Revolution" podcast (Theedrevolution .com). Whenever you program it to do so, the free podcast aggregator software that sits on your computer will go out and check to see if Ben has a new show for you to listen to and, if so, will download it to your computer. Even better, if your MP3 player is connected to your computer at the time, the software will send it over automatically. So, conceivably, you could wake up every morning, disconnect your player from the computer and go out for that early morning run or drive with a whole list of new content to listen to.Apple loves this, of course, because it's suddenly made the iPod (or iPhone) into a mobile radio station that can hold personalized, time-shifted content for your consumption whenever you feel like. And they also love it because of the name, even though none of this requires an iPod. It could just as easily be "audio casting" or "blogcasting" or something else, but podcasting has stuck.So who is podcasting? Mostly, it's people from all different walks of life with all sorts of interests. Politicians are definitely in the podcasting groove, as every candidate for the presidency in 2008 started pumping them out well before the primaries. Rightly so, they see the genre as way of getting out their respective messages. Businesses, churches, governments, and, you guessed it, schools are getting into the act as well.The best place to start your podcasting indoctrination is to take sometime to listen to a few shows. But be prepared: This is not the highly polished, professional radio you might be used to. Cracks and pops, obscure music, and "urns" and "ahs" are all a part of the podcast genre. Remember, most podcasters are just average Jills and Joes, with day jobs and kids and responsibilities, and ideas that they want to share. Try not to let production value overwhelm what might be really interesting content. PODCASTS AND SCHOOLS As with most of these other technologies, it's not hard to see why podcasts are making inroads in schools. One way to get into the flow of educationrelated podcasting is to visit the Education Podcast Network (tinyurl .coml66grdx), which lists nearly 1 ,000 different education-related shows. Not only is there a growing directory of educators who are doing personal podcasts, there are links to suggested classroom uses broken down both by grade level and subject. And remember, the underlying technology here is digital recording and the idea that it is now very easy to create and publish these recordings. You and your students may not have iPods or MP3 players, and the good news is you don't need them to start using audio in this way. As long as you have a way to make the recording, and as long as your students have access to the Internet, you can make this work. More about that in a minute. In general, radio broadcasting is now a reality for the vast majority of schools that can't afford radio stations. About $ 100 and an Internet connection is all you need to start doing regular radio shows with your students. And once again, the motivating factor, to me at least, is that the content of these shows does not have to be limited to a school or community audience. Podcasting is yet another way for them to be creating and contributing ideas to a larger conversation, and it's a way of archiving that contribution for future audiences to use. One of my favorite examples is Radio Willow Web from the Willowdale Elementary School in Omaha, Nebraska (tinyurl.coml2z2ujz). As the Web site says, these Willowcasts are "online radio shows for kids by kids" But podcasting doesn't just have to be edu-radio. There are many other ways that teachers can bring the genre into the classroom. World language teachers could record and publish daily practice lessons that students could listen to at home or, if they are forumate enough, could download to their own MP3 players. Like the Madrid Young Learners Podcasts site (tinyurl.com/5qbqze), where an English speaker tells a story via a podcast and non-English-speaking listeners answer questions in English via comments. How hard would it be to make your own site like this (now that you know how to blog), with teachers enlisting native speakers from around the world to teU stories that their own students respond to? Social studies teachers could have their students do oral histories, interviews, or reenactments of historical events. Science teachers could have students narrate labs or dissections or experiments to record their processes. Music teachers could record weekly recitals or special events as podcasts. AU teachers could record important parts of what they do in the classroom that can then be archived to the class Weblog and used by students who may have missed the class or just want a refresher on what happened. Steve Brooks over at EduGadget.com has some suggestions that schools and districts might want to think about, including guided "pod tours" of the campus on back-to-school night (perhaps created by students), or tours of art displays narrated by the artists. You could record assemblies, do new teacher orientations, have supervisors record descriptions of their departments, and record board meetings for students, teachers, and parents who are unable to attend. Principals could record weekly or monthly messages to the community, teachers, or even students. As with blogs, the possibilities are only limited by your imagination (Brooks, 2005a).Remember, all of these ideas can be put into practice simply by recording digital audio, but the key to turning your or your students' recordings into podcasts is to publish them. That's what the ReadlWrite Web is all about: being able to share what you create with others. As I 've said before, keep thinking about ways to add these student contributions to the larger database of learning that's out there. Video Publishing While elementary school kids seem to love podcasting, older kids have started gravitating to video in a big way. And the biggest reason for that without question is YouTube.com. Bought by Google back in 2006 for over a billion dollars, YouTube is already having an enormous disruptive effect on our society, and it's also becoming a place where more and more of our students go to publish the artifacts of their lives. As of this writing, over 20 hours of videos are being uploaded to YouTube every minute, which translates to almost four years' worth of video uploaded each day (tinyurl.comJp464gl). Staggering numbers, if you ask me. Not surprisingly, it's also a site that most schools have chosen to block. While, as with the other sites we've discussed here, the vast majority of YouTube content is appropriate, the "anyone can publish anything" aspect can be unsettling. (Still, wouldn't it be better to teach students how to deal with less-than-salient content that they see when they get home?) The same goes for Google Video and a number of the other popular uploading sites. So, a number of alternatives for educators are already springing up, the most notable of which is TeacherTube.com. TeacherTube has thousands of studentand- teacher-produced videos and wants yours as well. The great part about these online services is that they're free, number one, and they are unlimited in terms of their use. And, in the case ofYouTube, you can even record video right from your computer onto their server. Very cool. But as with podcasting, there is a certain amount of writing and preparation that goes into great movie making. It's digital storytelling in its most complex form, and it requires a significant amount of thinking and work to do it well. And, of course, the process is a bit more complex, making it difficult to cover in this small amount of space. My goal here is to point you in the right direction to get started. Getting started with video requires a bit more of an investment than with pod casting, but you can still produce some great movies on a shoestring budget. And remember, while quality is important, what's critical are the writing, producing, and publishing skills that students learn in the process. In that regard, the time investment is also much greater. Digital video cameras can run into the thousands of dollars these days, but you should be able to find a decent one for $300 or less. (A good starting point for your search is at cNet.com.) If there is one requirement for whatever you choose, make sure the camera has an external input for a microphone. That way, if you are shooting video from across the room, you can buy an extra long (like 30 feet) mic extension cord and drape it over a broomstick to create a makeshift boom mic for better audio quality. Before filming, remember to take the time to have students plan their movies using storyboards that frame out the story, and to do some basic instruction on how to hold and use the camera. One of the best resources for this that I've found is the video podcast at ]zzyVideo.c0111. Just check out the list along the right hand side of the page and you'll see a list of the dozens of short tutorials that can really help you understand the nuances of digital video production. Once you have a camera, and you've shot some video, you'll need to do some editing and production. Luckily, both Windows and Mac platforms have good basic video editors in MovieMaker and iMovie, respectively. Both allow you to import video and audio, and you can record audio voiceovers right onto your movie as well. You can create title screens, add text, run credits, and much more. In fact, the capabilities of these two free programs will most likely far outpace your and your students' needs. Both come with pretty good "Getting Started" tutorials that [ urge you to check out, or, of course, there are entire books out there dedicated to the subject. And, no surprise, there are also online video recording and editing alternatives. (Have 1 mentioned that the Web is becoming an app?) One to look at from an easy recording standpoint is JayCut.com, where you can upload your raw video from your computer, mix files together, add music and audio, and publish to your favorite video site. There are already many alternatives out there, so you may want to dig around your network for some suggestions when you read this. SCREENCASTING One step up from podcasting is screencasting, which is a relatively new medium that I think has a lot of promise in the classroom. Simply put, screencasting involves capturing what you or your students do on the computer with an audio narration to go with it. The easiest way to understand screencasting is to watch one. So, right now, go watch one of my all-time favorite screencasts about Wikipedia that was done by John Udell at tinyurl.comlydp2sfg. I'll wait until you come back. Okay, get the picture? (And "get" Wikipedia a bit more?) The potential is pretty obvious, I think. From a teaching standpoint, you could create screencasts as support materials when teaching complex skills on the computer. If you had a Tablet PC, you could capture the ink annotations or written solutions that you share with your students. You could create' training videos for peers, narrate PowerPoint-created tours for parents, or make video collections of exemplary student work. Once again, the possibilities are enormous. With your students, you could ask them to annotate their work in voice as they show it on screen.Or, you could have them create their own Internet tours. Or, have them read stories or poetry they write with accompanying visuals they have either created or found. They can even take some of those podcast ideas and attach visual images to go along with it. It's limited only by your and their creativity. Once you have Jing up and running, it sits in the upper right-hand corner of your screen like a small sun, waiting and ready. Any time you want to make a quick capture, you just mouse over it and three rays of sunlight shoot out-a plus-sign icon that let's you start the capture process, a disk icon that lets you look at the history of what you have captured, and a gear icon where you can configure things. Click on the plus sign and you get crosshairs that you can drag over any portion of the screen that you want to capture. If you want the entire window, just drag the crosshairs onto it and click once. When you are done selecting, just click on the "video" tab at the bottom left, and you'll get a 3 . . . 2 . . . I countdown to begin your recording. (You can also use Jing as a screen-capture tool by clicking on the "Image" tab instead.) At this point, start talking and working on your desktop to capture whatever process you're demonstrating. Remember that most screencasts should be shorter rather than longer, and, in fact, Jing limits you to five minutes. When you're done, click "Stop." (You can also click "Pause" if you need to stop just for a moment.) Immediately, Jing wiIJ pop up a playback window where you can preview what you just captured. Take a look, and if you don't like it, just cancel it and do it again. LIVE STREAMING-WEB TV FOR THE ClASSROOMS The most recent entry into the multimedia publishing discussion is livestreaming video to the Web. In a nutshell, we're talking the ability of teachers and students to create their own TV shows online injust a few clicks. And, if you have a personal learning network at your disposal, you also have a potential audience at your fingertips. While this is still pretty unexplored territory in education circles, and while the tools are evolving rapidly, a surprisingly large number of teachers are already experimenting with the idea of creating live "television" with their students in their classrooms and schools. And because of how incredibly easy it is to do this, that number is increasing greatly every day. The examples run the gamut: school plays and musicals being broadcast to relatives far and wide, student science presentations for parents to watch, live student-run daily news broadcasts, live teacher professional development that anyone can tune into, conference workshops and presentations free to those who couldn't make the trip, and all sorts of other possibilities. Basically, we're close to the point where every school, every classroom, every person, in fact, can own a television station. Don't believe me? Here's a quick story. On the night of the New Hampshire primary in 2008, I got a Skypechat asking me to come watch and participate in a live review of the election returns on the "Newly Ancient" streaming TV channel at Ustream.tv. So I clicked on the link, and who should I find conducting a careful analysis of the voting while talking live via Skype with people around the world and interacting with about 1 5 "viewers" in the show's chat room but Arthus Erea, that 14-year old blogger I mentioned a couple of chapters back. That was a "sit up and take notice" moment for me, no doubt. No question, the live streaming from the phone option is not as high quality as from the computer, but, in all honesty, it isn't bad. At this moment, Ustream Mobile works with just about any Nokia phone that has a camera, and with a jail-broken iPhone 3G. (l never told you that, by the way.) You simply download the application to your phone, find something worthwhile to stream (like my daughter's basketball games), and press whatever button means "Start" on your phone. Anyone who has the address of your Ustream.tv "show" can just tune in and watch. Like the computer version, you can save the recordings to your show page, and, whenever anyone watching your show types in a chat comment or question, you see it on the video screen on your phone so you can just talk back a reply. Pretty amazing. Also going down this road is Qik.com, which, at this moment at least, supports even more phones. And if you do have a jail-broken iPhone 3 G (shhhh!), both services now have apps i n the App Store on iTunes. (Ustream also has an app that allows you to watch live streams on your iPhone, regardless of whether you've hacked it or not.) All of that being said, our ability to create and share multimedia in more and more transparent ways is only going to continue to expand. The potentials are huge, and the pitfalls challenging. But publishing to an audience can be a great motivator for students. Podcasting, videocasting, screen casting, and now live-streaming TV are all great ways to get student content onlin.